IHOP pulled a slick marketing move in 2018 when they announced that they were changing the name of their restaurant IHOB. The move was received with an endless amount of roasting from the online community but it did pay off to an extent. It not only created a massive buzz online through social media platforms like Twitter but that buzz generated a massive spike in burger sales for the International House Of Pancakes.
Chief Marketing Officer of IHOP, Brad Haley, revealed at a marketing conference, Brandweek, that the company sold four times more burgers after the campaign. The campaign helped generate more traffic to their restaurant which had been on the decline over the past ten quarters. Haley said that the company sold 500K burgers per week at its peak. IHOP's parent company, Dine Brands, said that the breakfast joint's same-store sales increased by 1.2% in its third quarter.
IHOP is obviously known as a breakfast place. However, Haley explained that the afternoons were often lacking in the sales department which opened the idea for the burgers.
"We knew that there was a big credibility gap for this pancake and burger place to come up with a good burger,” Haley told Adweek.
“So we knew we had a great burger. We knew we had an offer in place that wouldn’t remove the barrier to trial for people,” he said. “At least it would significantly reduce [the barrier]—but we still had to figure out how to make the world consider a burger from a pancake house.”